Chinese Social Credit System (SCS) is a set of mechanisms providing rewards or punishments to companies, national and local state departments, and individuals, based not only on the lawfulness but also the morality of their actions. It is a behavioural control to confront these actors with the consequences of their actions, and to increase enforcement. Recent events of consumption privations and access bans to state services draw a lot of attention to this governance practice. Although there is a framework defined by the Chinese regime - described in a document “Planning outline for the construction of a SCS” released in June 2014 - SCS is not one system but of combination of private and public credit systems, particularly active at local levels. It is fostered by the intrusion of data in Chinese society - and it relies on the knowledge and the infrastructure of national technology giants. However, it is profoundly driven by traditional relation to trust and it builds on ideological antecedents. This study intention is to extract a solid understanding of what is SCS from the confused and unfair characterisations of China’s initiative, look into the cultural roots leading to the birth and acceptation of the SCS in China, show the heterogeneity of the local applications of SCS, distinguish private scoring systems from central black list SCS, and analyse how reputation mechanisms can be used as a political tool to influence behaviours in society.